My favorite tool for asking memory questions is at Crucial.com. For the SC430, it looks like only PC2-4200 ECC memory is supported. The SC440 lists the range of ECC memory from PC2-4200 to PC2-6400. I suspect all the memory needs to be the same and the BIOS probably needs to be the latest version.
I guess the other question would be, what problem are you trying to solve?
My SC 440 has Dell's mirror image card on the two hard drives, making it as slow as molasses. I just thought that by kicking the memory speed from 533 to 667 or 800 MHz, that the server would be faster.
From reading the User Guide here, it looks like the system supports two SATA (or SAS) drives on the internal controller in a RAID-1 (mirrored) configuration.
Unless you're doing more writes than reads, this shouldn't slow down your machine. Actually, if you're reading a lot, it will slightly speed up the system.
Performance Analysis 101
What you have to look at is what's going on in the system. There are three main components:
CPU
Memory
Disk
I've left off the network because that's external to the machine but you can include that too. The question is which one is your limiting factor. If you're running Windows, the Task Manager can show you basics about CPU and Memory. If they're not at 100%, then you're limited by Disk I/O. Short of adding faster disks, there's not much you can do about that in this system.
For memory, it's not the speed of the memory that's going to limit your performance, it's the amount of it. If the system is memory constrained, you'll never see the difference between 533Mhz memory and 800Mhz memory. Same is true with the disk.
You also want to consider your load characterization. What are you doing with the server. Is it a file server (minimum CPU, some memory, and lots of disk and network I/O), a web server (disk and network I/O), or an application server (CPU, memory and disk).
Tools
If you're running Windows, there are a couple of tools. Task Manager is available on all versions of Windows. You right-click on the task bar (at the bottom) and select Task Manager.
If you're running one of the Server versions of Windows, under Administration Tools is Performance. This is a more robust tool to measure system performance. There are lots of measurements you can monitor with the Performance tool. If you click on the + symbol, you can search through them. There's an explain button which tells something about the measurement.
If you're not running Windows, I wish you the best of luck. It's been years since I've had to analyze a Unix system.
I'm back to square one. I can buy a couple 1GB sticks at the same speed (533 MHZ) as the current RAM. I just thought that if I bought 2 1 GB sticks at 800 MHz instead of 533 MHz that it would speed up the system. I was concerned that maybe I would have to install a different bios.
Right now (copying from Dell) my system has 512 MB, 533 MHz, 64x72,8, 240 pin 1Rx8. I don't know what the "8" is or the "1Rx8."
With the info above from Dell, can I install two 1 GB 667 MHz or two 1 GB 800 MHz without having a melt down or malfunction?
Don't know what you're budget is but at <$100 for a 2x1Gb kit, I'd buy two kits (4Gb) and shelve the existing memory. Again, depending on your workload, you'll gain more from the extra memory (512Mb is a bit light for a server) than the increase in the memory speed.
If there's slots in one of the other machines, you could move the memory over there too.
jcn77056
667 Posts
0
April 17th, 2008 16:00
My favorite tool for asking memory questions is at Crucial.com. For the SC430, it looks like only PC2-4200 ECC memory is supported. The SC440 lists the range of ECC memory from PC2-4200 to PC2-6400. I suspect all the memory needs to be the same and the BIOS probably needs to be the latest version.
I guess the other question would be, what problem are you trying to solve?
Capt Jack Sparr
3 Posts
0
April 17th, 2008 19:00
My SC 440 has Dell's mirror image card on the two hard drives, making it as slow as molasses. I just thought that by kicking the memory speed from 533 to 667 or 800 MHz, that the server would be faster.
Am I right?
jcn77056
667 Posts
0
April 17th, 2008 20:00
From reading the User Guide here, it looks like the system supports two SATA (or SAS) drives on the internal controller in a RAID-1 (mirrored) configuration.
Unless you're doing more writes than reads, this shouldn't slow down your machine. Actually, if you're reading a lot, it will slightly speed up the system.
Performance Analysis 101
What you have to look at is what's going on in the system. There are three main components:
I've left off the network because that's external to the machine but you can include that too. The question is which one is your limiting factor. If you're running Windows, the Task Manager can show you basics about CPU and Memory. If they're not at 100%, then you're limited by Disk I/O. Short of adding faster disks, there's not much you can do about that in this system.
For memory, it's not the speed of the memory that's going to limit your performance, it's the amount of it. If the system is memory constrained, you'll never see the difference between 533Mhz memory and 800Mhz memory. Same is true with the disk.
You also want to consider your load characterization. What are you doing with the server. Is it a file server (minimum CPU, some memory, and lots of disk and network I/O), a web server (disk and network I/O), or an application server (CPU, memory and disk).
Tools
If you're running Windows, there are a couple of tools. Task Manager is available on all versions of Windows. You right-click on the task bar (at the bottom) and select Task Manager.
If you're running one of the Server versions of Windows, under Administration Tools is Performance. This is a more robust tool to measure system performance. There are lots of measurements you can monitor with the Performance tool. If you click on the + symbol, you can search through them. There's an explain button which tells something about the measurement.
If you're not running Windows, I wish you the best of luck. It's been years since I've had to analyze a Unix system.
Capt Jack Sparr
3 Posts
0
April 17th, 2008 22:00
I'm back to square one. I can buy a couple 1GB sticks at the same speed (533 MHZ) as the current RAM. I just thought that if I bought 2 1 GB sticks at 800 MHz instead of 533 MHz that it would speed up the system. I was concerned that maybe I would have to install a different bios.
Right now (copying from Dell) my system has 512 MB, 533 MHz, 64x72,8, 240 pin 1Rx8. I don't know what the "8" is or the "1Rx8."
With the info above from Dell, can I install two 1 GB 667 MHz or two 1 GB 800 MHz without having a melt down or malfunction?
Don
jcn77056
667 Posts
0
April 18th, 2008 13:00
Don't know what you're budget is but at <$100 for a 2x1Gb kit, I'd buy two kits (4Gb) and shelve the existing memory. Again, depending on your workload, you'll gain more from the extra memory (512Mb is a bit light for a server) than the increase in the memory speed.
If there's slots in one of the other machines, you could move the memory over there too.